Post by tavis on Sept 5, 2009 18:54:06 GMT -6
At a used bookstore today I came across the second book in this Magira, or Darkness, series. The cover of the first book says it's "from the chronicles of the world's longest existing fantasyland," and the intro of the one I was looking at says that the characters and setting of the novels are based on a fantasy wargame that the author created in 1967 along with the friend who wrote the introduction, and which they say hundreds of people have played since. Anyone know about this game or the series of books?
EDIT: The Fantasy Atlas site has some maps from the books, and John Kim's RPG Encyclopedia has an entry for a game based on the books:
Abenteuer in Magira
1st ed by Steffi Seipp, Dieter Steinseifer, Norbert Weiser, Harald Zubrod (1988) Abenteuerrunde GbR
"Adventures in Magira" -- a German-language fantasy RPG set in the world of Magira novels by Hugh Walker. The game was developed from a long-standing fan club of the fantasy work. It uses a d20 based system, except for damage which uses Nd6. Three attributes (strength, skill, and constitution) are determined with d100 table which gives values from -1 to +3. Modifiers for attributes, skill, and difficulty are added to 1d20, which must be at least 15 for success.
Also, this German booksite has some quotes about the series, including: "Hugh Walker is a cult. Without him there would be no fantasy as we know it in Germany. The 'Magira'-cycle of novels is his life's work – and an unforgettable reading experience." Helmut W. Pesch
That site also has some info about the author:
Hugh Walker is the pseudonym of Hubert Straßl who was born in the Austrian town of Linz in 1941. The range of genres in which he has written in is enormous, including everything from science fiction to fantasy, horror and murder mystery. When he is not writing fiction he works as a translator. An older, partial edition of the "Magira"-novels has already been published in the USA. But the series was later substantially rewritten and changed, although the most important motifs have been retained.
EDIT part 2: A 1978 article linking swords & sorcery fiction to fascism has this info:
In West Germany, Hugh Walker (pseudonym of Hubert Strassl) has so far written two Magira novels.14 They grew out of a board-game that he played for eight years with his buddies at the conventions of FOLLOW, a German-Austrian fan club that publishes fanzines and at its meetings arranges, among other affairs, tournaments with wooden swords: "Many battles have taken place and become history," he notes proudly, referring to this board game.15 His novels present a player who gets into the world of his Magira figures and quaffs a new brew of the old HF mixture that Strassl has consumed so long and so enthusiastically: priests, gods, beautiful women, torture, sleepers, double-edged swords, wrestling for power: "But it is not the players alone who wrestle, or the kings — other mysterious powers take part also."16 Everything, according to Strassi, has to obey the rules of that game, "which must be played, so that a world may run its course, steered by the logic of reason unhampered by compassion or conscience."17 Such an obsessive idea, translated into HF, of the nature of man, society, environment, and the laws governing them, is just what most fascinates the petty bourgeois: to be allowed to play fate, to throw the dice himself, yet in the same old power structures "unhampered by compassion or conscience."
Strassl was also the initiator of the so far only series of fantasy booklets in West Germany, Dragon, Soehne von Atlantis (Restatt: Pabel Verlag, 1973-4, 55 booklets), written, in addition to him, by the Perry Rhodan authors Voltz, Kneifel, Vlcek, Darlton, and Terrid. There they had themselves a ball writing about those Atlantic braves in a new fantasy-world where the good and the evil hack each other to pieces.18
EDIT: The Fantasy Atlas site has some maps from the books, and John Kim's RPG Encyclopedia has an entry for a game based on the books:
Abenteuer in Magira
1st ed by Steffi Seipp, Dieter Steinseifer, Norbert Weiser, Harald Zubrod (1988) Abenteuerrunde GbR
"Adventures in Magira" -- a German-language fantasy RPG set in the world of Magira novels by Hugh Walker. The game was developed from a long-standing fan club of the fantasy work. It uses a d20 based system, except for damage which uses Nd6. Three attributes (strength, skill, and constitution) are determined with d100 table which gives values from -1 to +3. Modifiers for attributes, skill, and difficulty are added to 1d20, which must be at least 15 for success.
Also, this German booksite has some quotes about the series, including: "Hugh Walker is a cult. Without him there would be no fantasy as we know it in Germany. The 'Magira'-cycle of novels is his life's work – and an unforgettable reading experience." Helmut W. Pesch
That site also has some info about the author:
Hugh Walker is the pseudonym of Hubert Straßl who was born in the Austrian town of Linz in 1941. The range of genres in which he has written in is enormous, including everything from science fiction to fantasy, horror and murder mystery. When he is not writing fiction he works as a translator. An older, partial edition of the "Magira"-novels has already been published in the USA. But the series was later substantially rewritten and changed, although the most important motifs have been retained.
EDIT part 2: A 1978 article linking swords & sorcery fiction to fascism has this info:
In West Germany, Hugh Walker (pseudonym of Hubert Strassl) has so far written two Magira novels.14 They grew out of a board-game that he played for eight years with his buddies at the conventions of FOLLOW, a German-Austrian fan club that publishes fanzines and at its meetings arranges, among other affairs, tournaments with wooden swords: "Many battles have taken place and become history," he notes proudly, referring to this board game.15 His novels present a player who gets into the world of his Magira figures and quaffs a new brew of the old HF mixture that Strassl has consumed so long and so enthusiastically: priests, gods, beautiful women, torture, sleepers, double-edged swords, wrestling for power: "But it is not the players alone who wrestle, or the kings — other mysterious powers take part also."16 Everything, according to Strassi, has to obey the rules of that game, "which must be played, so that a world may run its course, steered by the logic of reason unhampered by compassion or conscience."17 Such an obsessive idea, translated into HF, of the nature of man, society, environment, and the laws governing them, is just what most fascinates the petty bourgeois: to be allowed to play fate, to throw the dice himself, yet in the same old power structures "unhampered by compassion or conscience."
Strassl was also the initiator of the so far only series of fantasy booklets in West Germany, Dragon, Soehne von Atlantis (Restatt: Pabel Verlag, 1973-4, 55 booklets), written, in addition to him, by the Perry Rhodan authors Voltz, Kneifel, Vlcek, Darlton, and Terrid. There they had themselves a ball writing about those Atlantic braves in a new fantasy-world where the good and the evil hack each other to pieces.18